Hello. I am a mentally ill single man who currently is trying to better himself. I have no friends, and haven't made any since I was like 20 I'm 24 now

I struggle with autism and depression and I have many a year before I'm healthy enough to consider intimacy. Despite this being not a bad thing I'm still tortured in my dreams and constantly fantasize about intimacy. Usually it's being held and talked to in a nice way.

I shouldn't; but I get a pang of pain seeing people around me, especially my age group succeeding in friendships and intimacy. I know I shouldn't compare myself to others and life is not a race yada yada but it doesn't remove the sting

I talked to my psychologist and whilst he agrees I'm not goingto be ready for a long time: he finds my wish to go on drugs to kill my libido is disturbing and wrote a note to my psychiatrist about it.

Would mediation work? I'm really tired of feeling this way. Why should I keep being teased by something I'm far away from?

>>19357593I don't form healthy connections with other people. I go to therapy frequently and take a fair share of tism classes. I also generally should be able to hold down a friendship for a few years before trying to attempt intimacy, no?

I'm taking baby steps. I need to learn friendships first, and how to be happy by myself.

I try to fill my life with things to ignore these feelings but it just doesn't stop permeating my mind. I know it's "human" but affection isn't something that's an entitlement.

It is a dangerous idea that humans should be „happy ln their own“. That‘s impossible. Humans are social animals and we NEED and rely on social interactions/connections/support.

You won‘t be able to become stable and happy on your own. And then you‘ll never feel like you‘re now „ready to take the next step“ aka friendship. So you‘ll stay lonely and misreable all your life and make zero progress. Humans can only learn human interactions trough trial and error. That usually happens naturally during childhood and teen years. Kids grow from „biting people who steal my toys“. That‘s a long way to go till you‘re able to do „live in a close relationship with another human being without it being a complete disaster“. I think most people don‘t give that development enough weight. It is very, VERY easy to disturb that development and in a huge number of people, it never went the way it should have.

Just imagine yourself as a little boy. You went into social interactions completely unbiased. But you learned with every second you spent with other people. That started the day you were born (probably even before that). You learne how your mom reacts to you and you made conclusions about the world and humans from those reactions. That‘s all good and well, unless your mom reacted less than optimal. Maybe she was overprotective. Maybe she had anger issues. Maybe she was depressed. That and a gazillion other things can really skew with your ability to form sucessfull bonds. There was an experiment done with newborns, where they instructed their moms to not react to their babies efforts to connect with her (eye contact, reaching out their hands, babbling). The mother was to look at her baby, but just with an empty stare. The babies DESPERATELY tried to get a reaction from her. It took only a short moment for all of them to start crying. Cont

>>19357660Now imagine the imapct it has on a newborn if it, for example, has a depressed mother. She won‘t react to it apropriately and the baby will start to develope coping strategies. Those are actually connections in his brain that will continue to work in the learned manner even if that baby is a grown adult. Those are the faulty bugs who make kids „annoying“. They annoy others because they don‘t work the way they‘re supposed to. They continue to stray from the healthy way of human interactions and thus keep appaling others with inappropriate reactions. Obviously that has a huge impact on the child, it doesn‘t know why people react to it the way they do and why they don‘t react the way it expects them to. Tjat leaves it puzzled. It tries to find out what the hell is going on. Most often, the conclusion will be „i‘m probably just not worthy of love“. Which is utter bullshit, but the only logical conclusion for a child‘s brain. It gets a LOT worse when those kids become teens. That‘s the moment their main social interactions SHOULD shoft from the parents to peers. Maybe they have managed to kind of get by with theoarent situation, since those are zhe people who still kind of fit their learned behaviour. Once they notice how utterly they fail with peers, they might just give up conpletely, become „depressed“, „anxious“, „autistic“, bitter and extremely lonely and isolated. It makes it a lot worse that now their sexuality also awakes, suddenly their hormones urge them to seek intimacy with the other gender, but they are completely fucked up and have zero clue what to do with that sexual energy.

Can you see the huge dilemma that‘s unfolding here?

That‘s most likely exactly what happened with you. The obly way to make it better is to go back and learn the very basics of human interactions, free from parental failure. You can‘t do that with therapy or books. You can only learn trough trial and error and by exposure

>>19357660But is it not true I need to love myself before attempting to love others?

I have nothing to offer in a relationship, and I'm working on that. It'll take a long while so I probably won't get intimate any time soon.

I never had friends much as a child, so I'll be learning soon. I'm very stunted as far as my social life goes. I need to learn how to handle friendships first, no?

I was initially very nonverbal as a child and hardly ever made friends as a teen.I attended special education for years and practically lived in child psychology offices. every girl I asked out logically rejected me. Now that I'm an adult: it's a bit harder to be given a chance.

I create quite messy friendships and can never hold them down, so would you agree that there's work that needs to be done there?

>>19357685The way to go is to learn the theory behind human behaviour and USE it. It won‘t help to just go and interact with people. You‘ll just get rejected because of your faulty ways of doing that. It also won‘t help to just learn about it and not use it, because then it‘s dead information sitting in your brain. It needs practical backing up to actually become the new way you engage socially.

And never forget that a big percentage of people that you interact with is damaged in very similar ways that might manifest itself in different behaviour. So not every reaction you‘ll get is logical and healthy, making the whole thing even more complex. That doesn‘t mean that those people don‘t notice that something‘s not going right. They just, like you right now, can‘t pin point it or change it easily.

A good starting point to learn is early childhood development and evolutionary biology. Those are the corner stones of human behaviour and social interactions. You really need to understand how humans function in order to see where you have bugs in your code. And after that, you‘ll also be able to see right past the confusing behaviour of most people and see what‘s actually going on. That will make interacting with them a lot more pleasant, easy and successful.

>>19357695See, it is true that the base od your life is how worthy you think you are yourself. But it‘s very dangerous and backwards to assume that you can fix that point on your own. Humans rely on relationships and it is a huge part of where we derive our selfworth from. Look at it from an ecolutionary viewpoint. One single human was doomed to fail and die. It was urgent to belong to a tribe. It was necessary for your survival. That has led to your brain developing a deep need for human relationships. It is a survival strategy. Equal to hunger or thirst. You won‘t be able to „learn to not be hungry before i allow myself to eat“. You‘ll hust starve and die painfully. Same with starving yourself from human interactions. Your ability to „love yourself“ is heavily linked to how sucesfull you feel you are with building enjoyable connections with others. You can‘t be happy without that...

I don‘t think that you „first have to learn friendship“. Friendships and relationships are in some ways pretty similar and in others completely different. So attempting a relationship will also help you with learning how to hold down a friendship and vice versa. Ofc as a child you would have ideally first learned how to interact in a friendship setting before attempting yourself at a relationship (that‘s for example why you almost never end up spending the rest of your life with your first gf/bf. you both are still learning and will probably fuck up in huge ways. Trial and error. Some manage to stay together because they magically developed at the same speed, or not at all.), but you‘re not a cgild anymore who has 10 years to go from „middle school“ to „let‘s move in together“. You‘d have to try and improve on all ends at thw same time. Plus you‘re not starting at zero. I mean, you probably can interact better with adults than your average 10 year old... but you still need to learn about the basics because that‘s where the errors usually are.

>>19357739Nah, that doesn‘t take years. And you just need the basics. You‘ll see, once you‘ve gotten into it you‘ll naturally find stuff that catches your attention. That‘s for a reason and you definitely should keep going.

Yes, that‘s too bad. But giving up is not an option unless you are willing to drown your social need with drugs, acohol, eating, porn or excessive media consumption. Those are all ways to numb that drive and it‘s the reason you see all those „why can‘t i stop watching porn“, „how do i stop procrastinating with vidya“, „i am a fat slob and i can‘t stop eating“, „i noticed that i have started to drink daily“ - threads...

Or you become suicidal.

Either way, it‘s no option if you actually want to enjoy your life from time to time.

Yes, you are unprepared for intimacy. So prepare yourself. Prepare yourself the same way you would if you wanted to learn how to ride a monocycle. You get one. Then you try it and fail. You start looking online for tutorials on how to improve yor technique. That will help. But it will only help if you then take your monocycl out and try, fail, try again, fail harder, keep going, if you stay stuck in the „watching youtube tutorials“ phase then you won‘t make it. And right now you‘re in the „i‘ve tried and it won‘t work, so i‘ll just toss it in the garage and try to forget about it“-phase. You tell yourself that you first need to get physically fitter and that you also need smoother ground to practice on. You come up with ALL the reasons why you can‘t keep trying. Don‘t do that. Because human relationships are a lot more important to your sanity than being able to ride a monocycle...

>>19357743How am I to attempt a Relationship with poor mental health and little social experience? If I can't properly make friendships yet (I'm trying to learn as to why) how do I get the social experience and your "validations" for attempting intimacy? I can talk to other people, obviously; but I don't have friends nor a social group. I tried meetups but I was always the most awkward guy there.

I just want to not be stressed by the concept of intimacy simply because i want it. Just turn my libido back on when I've natured a good deal.

>>19357796You have to power trough. The secret is to not make bad assumptions about others.

See, you were the most awkward guy. I‘m also making assumptions now, but i assume that that bothered you. You might have turned the blame on yourself. „Why the fuck am i so god damn weird. Why can‘t i be more like xyz, making jokes and talking to everyone as if it was nothing. Maybe it‘s how i looks... maybe i smell bad? Maybe i have a creepy air.“. Or you turned on them: „why do they exclude me. How fucking vain they are. Why do they act as if i am contagious. Why does nobody talk to me? Fucking entitled assholes!“.

Neither of those train of thinking is conpletely true. It might have some trith in it. Maybe you DO have a creepy air. Maybe they are vain idiots. That‘s the „beauty“ of damaged people trying to interact. But to get past that, you‘ll have to assume that they, too, just want to have a good time. That they, just like you, won‘t judge your every word and move (or do you? If so, then working on that is a good start...). The key is to become more resilient. If a social interaction doesn‘t go well, shit happens. You need to learn to not let that bring you down too much. You can‘t eliminate the pain completely, but you‘ll have to stand up again and try again. Just like a little child learning to walk. They’ll fall and huet themselfes. They can‘t wait half a year till they muster up the courage to stand up again. They can, but then they might never learn it or need years for it. it always amazed me how resilient kids are to failure. They dust it off and try again. It‘s no different in adults. It‘s one of the most difficult things to do, but there unfortunately in no other way. See it this way: everytime you interact with someone, you learn something. It might be so small that you don‘t notice, but try to go into it with a sense of „what might i learn this time“ instead of „this will probably end disastrous“

>>19357577OP, I killed my need for intimacy. The answer was a lot of meditation and radical self acceptance. Not being afraid to make an ass of myself.

I used to want a girlfriend, now I realize that having a girlfriend would mean I have to stop doing everything I actually like. I wouldn't have time to do the shit I enjoy outside of work and I wouldn't be able to listen to ridiculous drone metal in the middle of the night.

I used to be clingy and need intimacy. It just kinda got shaken out of me after 2 years of constant shit happening. After a while other stuff just became priority. Life got shitty and I had to learn to cope with simpler methods than relying on other people. It was a matter of survival. idk if that helps OP but all these other people are full of shit. You are an adaptable human and can easily learn to be happy without others, just like a hermit living on a mountain.

This will bite you in your ass in a few years. I did the same and it worked well for about 5 years, then the facade starts to crumble. My dad even attempted it for 15 and all seemed to go well. Untill that moment it stops going well.

>>19357577I'm also on the spectrum and deal with the same issues. There is a fundamental difference in the way our brains work socially so it's 10x as hard to attract intimacy. Still, I believe practice actually helps. For example I started going to meetups and talking to people there; some conversations turned out awkward of course but since there were many people I got to practice talking a lot and I think that helped. Now when I want to approach someone I have a slightly better idea of what to say, how to act, etc. Our brains are just really complicated pattern matching machines. If we just go and practice over and over we should be able to pick up little tweaks that make it easier.Granted, I only have a few close friends and no gf so I'm not there yet. I hope at least when I get promoted this year with a huge cash bonus I can attract more girls.Face attractiveness is probably the most important trait but i can't change that so I try to focus on other things.

>>19357914If you can't handle the medical industry, then don't enter it. I'm just a diet tech lol. We have doctors that work 36 hour shifts and take power naps between calls.>>19357910Of course practice helps, but this would be the first time experiencing intimacy, so I don't see how you can just Practice for something like that. I've never developed close friends so I need to develop there a bit. That'll take a while working within platonic connections to make them stable. Hold onto that for a few years and maybe intimacy will be more tangible.

>>19357944How do you acquire something that doesn't exist for you as you are? You can't because it doesn't exist. You will have to suffer and sacrifice along your way to become grounded and educated on proper mannerisms. You will never be perfect and you are instantly on the list of people a lot of women will not date because of your disability. Love is discriminatory. What you need is a goal, clear and concise plans on becoming the best you can be and to learn how to meditate. I recommend the book "The illuminated mind". It's on Amazon so do yourself a favor and buy it with some of your 50 hours a week money. Good luck.

>>19357968Maybe not, but others like me can find some success. Somebody I used to know is more autistic than me and is in a very loving open relationship with a woman. However, he's also more socially adept than I.

I'm trying to achieve happiness and work. What more you need? The goal for now is to hold down friendships.